Google have just announced that the speed of your site will start directly affecting your profits. If you're using Adwords, fast landing pages will lead to a better Quality Score. Slow sites may well end up paying more for their clicks. More from the Google Adwords blog:
"Why are we doing this?
Two reasons: first, users have the best experience when they don't have to wait a long time for landing pages to load. Interstitial pages, multiple redirects, excessively slow servers, and other things that can increase load times only keep users from getting what they want: information about your business. Second, users are more likely to abandon landing pages that load slowly, which can hurt your conversion rate."
I make it a point to check the Joomla Extensions website every day to keep track of new developments but I've only seen two add-ons that significantly improve performance.
These components enable many more files to be sent to your site's cache and they allow your site to contact the database less and less. The downside is that you do need to replace a lot of core files but the components make it as easy as possible to manage the patching without needing to use FTP.
